History
Cowboy Wash is a cluster of nine Ancestral Puebloan sites on Ute Mountain near Towaoc in southwestern Colorado, identified in 1993 on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation. The small settlements include a well-known site dating to about 1150 to 1175 A.D. that may reflect migration during the late Chaco era. Excavation found signs of abrupt abandonment and the remains of twelve people, prompting intense debate. Some researchers interpreted cut marks, burned bones, broken long bones, tools, and molecular testing as evidence of cannibalism, while others proposed burial, ritual, or analytical errors. The site has become important both archaeologically and for conflicts between scientific interpretation and descendant-community concerns.
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Towaoc, Colorado · United States
